Gay Group Wins Formal Recognition From State Republican Party By SEEMA MEHTA The Log Cabin Republicans, a 38-year-old organization that had unsuccessfully sought a charter from the state party several times in the past, received the formal imprimatur on a 861-293 vote at the party’s biannual convention in Sacramento. Brandon Gesecki, a delegate from Carmel who supported the effort, said the vote showed how much the party in California has changed in recent years. “It would have been the complete opposite 15 years ago,” said Gesecki, who also turned in a proxy vote from former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado supporting...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker admitted Sunday to changing his views on the vexing issue of immigration. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the presidential was presented with a 2013 clip in which he told a Wisconsin newspaper that he could envision undocumented workers who pay penalties being offered a pathway to citizenship. Walker said Sunday that he has since changed his mind on what many conservatives deem to be "amnesty."

Appearing on Luke Russert’s online MSNBC TV program, Shift, New York Congressman Peter King (R) slammed fellow House Republicans for not simply banding together to pass a clean funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. King made it clear that he was fed up with Tea Party Republicans playing politics with Homeland Security funding. The New York Congressman declared: ”This madness has to end soon…I’ve had it with this self-righteous, delusional wing of the party.” King lamented that may GOP members of Congress come from very conservative districts where they “live in an echo chamber”. He argued that those...

The architect of Barack Obama’s successful campaigns for president said this week that Rick Perry and Ted Cruz would have uphill battles for the 2016 GOP nomination for the White House. David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s closest advisers, said Texas’ junior senator did have support with hard-right conservatives. But he questioned whether Cruz could build on it. “Ted Cruz has a base. That base will be there,” Axelrod told The Dallas Morning News before a forum at the World Affairs Council in Dallas. “Whether it’s large enough is another question.” Axelrod was not bullish on the prospects of...

The Sarah Palin who returned to the GOP stage Thursday had no props, few Palinisms, and just a ghost of her former folksy twang. So what if there were still falsehoods? Palin 2016! Failed reality television star and mistress of liberal America Sarah Palin is strutting out onstage at CPAC, clad in a white blazer and black skirt. She places her water bottle on the floor next to the podium and opens a binder. A typical Palin speech usually involves props: Dr. Seuss books or Big Gulp sodas. This year, she has none. A typical Palin speech is usually an...

Cruz channels his inner televangelist.If the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting is a sort of “American Idol” for would-be GOP presidential candidates, the contenders aren’t learning from the mistakes of previous losers. After the 2012 elections – when Republicans lost the White House to an incumbent under fire for the still-struggling economy – some sensible people in the party (South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of them) uttered an important truth: The Republicans, to be successful, can’t just be against things. They have to be for something, have to present a positive and innovative vision for America. We’re not...

Josh DiNatale (left) and Zachary Burns, St. Joseph's University students and members of their College Republicans chapter, get ready to pose for a photo with a cutout of Sen. Rand Paul at CPAC 2015. The Conservative Political Action Conference, held this week in Washington D.C., is prime time for 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls trying — yes, already — to win over a key part of their base. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Gov. Scott Walker and others paraded on and off the main stage, trying to fire up the crowd with their ideas for America's next,...

When Americans are asked what they define to be the nation’s most pressing security challenges, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (and Egypt, and Yemen, and Libya, etc.) is perhaps foremost on their minds. But the threat posed by ISIS is a near-term one. In the longer term, the ascension of regional powers and the threat they pose to their neighbors is of most pressing concern. Through inaction and indifference, President Barack Obama’s failure to safeguard the post-Cold War order and the relative global peace that has accompanied it has made the world a markedly more dangerous place. Americans...

So clever of BuzzFeed to drop this today, with Bush set to sit down with Sean Hannity onstage at CPAC in 24 hours for Q&A. Think this story might come up? Think it’ll be talked about tonight at the local bars among conservatives already suspicious of Jeb’s ideological leanings? There’s more evidence here than I can fairly excerpt of how strongly Bush’s top advisors feel about this issue, so you’ll have to read the whole thing. Here’s the key bit, though: But inside Bush’s orbit, some believe his personal feelings on the subject may have evolved beyond his on-the-record statements....

The UKIP leader will share a stage with high-profile US conservatives including Sarah Palin and NRA gun lobbyists.UKIP leader Nigel Farage is expected to get a celebrity reception in Washington when he addresses America's most high-profile right-wing conference this week. Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and the National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby will be sharing a stage with the British politician after he was invited to address the Conservative Political Action Committee in the US capital. Aides told Sky News his philosophy has much in common with his republican hosts, who also focus on "the battle for smaller...

As Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republican lawmakers battle the Obama administration on his executive orders on immigration, a national gay rights group is targeting the potential 2016 presidential candidate over another executive order protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in the federal workforce. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, on Wednesday released a comprehensive research report on Cruz that highlights his record on gay rights. Cruz, who is addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington Thursday, is an outspoken opponent of same sex marriage. With...

As potential Republican candidates gather this week in Washington, D.C. for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), HRC released a new microsite, 2016: Republican Facts, that will serve as an online resource for documenting the record and rhetoric of potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates, and where they stand on key LGBT issues. Some three years after the RNC “autopsy” concluded that candidates need to “demonstrate they care” about LGBT Americans, candidates instead appear to prefer avoiding LGBT issues entirely. The New York Times reported recently that despite a looming Supreme Court Ruling on marriage equality, “notably, from those who are...

Sen. Ted Cruz is getting close to announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. The Texan is spending almost as much time in Iowa and New Hampshire as he does on Fox News; he's hired a staff and collected a long list of fiercely conservative supporters.. There's at least one hitch: Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta. His mother was a U.S. citizen, born in Delaware; his father, a Cuban refugee working in Canada's oil fields. Thanks to his mother, Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth. But that doesn't clear up a...

It’s an industry trade show like Comic-Con, but also a feel-good festival à la Burning Man. It’s got Super Bowlesque hoopla, and for activists on the right, the annual meeting is the get-together in Washington. Thousands of conservatives will gather Wednesday for the weeklong Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and others will try to woo their base in the lead-up to 2016. The event, long held at Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel, was moved by organizers to the recently built Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland—a Democratic stronghold,...

If Republican presidential contenders want to win in 2016, they should take a page from Bill Clinton’s playbook. And the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), beginning Wednesday in Washington, provides them with a perfect opportunity. In 1992, Clinton set himself apart from left-wing identity politics by criticizing radical rapper Sister Souljah at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. (Souljah had spoken on a panel hosted by the organization and had made provocative anti-white statements.) Today, much like Democrats in 1992, Republicans have an image problem with voters outside their base. Even as they control Congress, just as Democrats did in 1992, they’ve...

In an interview for Newsmax TV, released on Monday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) accused President Obama of turning America into a monarchy. He also condemned Congressional Democrats for being “partisan rubber stamps for a lawless president”. While that style of blustering rhetoric is not unusual for the Republican Senator, he also went a step further by comparing President Obama to corrupt former President Nixon. Trying to draw parallels to Nixon’s lawless abuse of power during the Watergate scandal, Cruz complained: We’ve had presidents in the past who have abused power. But when that has happened: When Richard Nixon abused...

It’s that time of year and Americans are honoring some of our favorite presidents. How about honoring our female presidents this time around? Oh, I forgot. There aren’t any. Frankly, I find America’s two-centuries-and-counting streak of all-male presidents astounding. You’d think it was against the law to elect a woman. (It probably would have been if the founding fathers had even thought it could happen — it’s not like they let them vote or anything.) And it’s not that women haven’t tried. Most people don’t know about the first woman to run for our highest office. Victoria Woodhull gave it...

One of the least interesting news manias of the week has been former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani discussing his opinion that President Obama doesn't really love America (or you, or me, or him). Obama has been the very living embodiment of American government power for the past 7 years, and not too reluctant to use it against enemies, and just random citizens, both foreign and domestic—whether it comes to foreign policy, spending, taxing, regulating, and arresting. Thus, I doubt any alleged lack of love for the U.S. of A matters in any way that Giuliani or the people delighted to...

Does it matter if Obama is a Christian or not? No, but it matters how Republicans answer stupid questions like that.Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been surging in recent weeks, and there is a sense he could be the guy to bridge the gap between the Republican establishment and the grassroots conservative base. But campaigns are crucibles, and if the last couple of days are a harbinger of things to come, heÂ’s in trouble. Could it be that the governor who fought so courageously against Wisconsin unions might not be ready for prime time on the national stage? No, IÂ’m...

Ted Cruz came to Jacksonville Friday night and called out Jeb Bush on Common Core. More so than most of the other Republicans testing the waters for 2016, Cruz has taken shots at Bush over Common Core. But this time Cruz fired away at Bush in his own backyard. Cruz said he and Bush had “significant policy disagreements” on Common Core and would not weigh in if the former Florida governor was a conservative, saying that was something voters had to decide for themselves. Of course, Cruz also touched on other topics -- repeal Obamacare, get rid of the IRS...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Potential Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham has "no doubt" that President Obama loves his country, refuting comments made by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani earlier this week. “Well, I love Rudy, but I don’t want to go there. The nation’s very divided. President Obama has divided us more than he’s brought us together and I don’t want to add to that division,” Graham initially said on ABC's "This Week" today, before adding, “I have no doubt that he loves his country. I have no doubt that he’s a patriot. But his primary job as president of the United...

Less than 11 months remain before the first votes are cast in the process of selecting our next president. The Granite Staters like to say Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks presidents. The truth is Iowans decide who's left for New Hampshire to pick from. I wrote last month I'd be exploring the GOP field in my coming columns, but this column will be my last for the Journal so I’m compelled to do a Cliff Notes version. Ted Cruz: The Spoiler. The junior senator from Texas has made as many, if not more trips to Iowa than anyone...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS NEWSHOUR: At one of the Scott Walker events this week, former New York Mayor, David, Rudy Giuliani made a statement that has gotten a lot of attention. He basically — he talked about President Obama and said, “He wasn’t raised like we were,” talking to the group. He said, “He doesn’t love this country as we do.” It’s gotten a lot of attention. Do we — how big a deal is it? DAVID BROOKS: Well, it’s — you know, it’s unacceptable. You can’t say that. He doesn’t know that. It’s not true. It’s self-destructive. There’s sort...

And remember during the Bush years, virtually every time George Bush made a gaff, or was caught in an embarrassing moment, the media would pounce on it? Especially when he made that comment about OBGYN? Or the classic gaff over "Fooling Me Once"?, Well where are the Democrat Leaders now with the unthinkable crisis we are in now?? Between the open borders, and all of the horrific events taking place in the middle east, why haven't we heard from Steny Hoyer, Reid, Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Shelia Jackson as Obama has now put the U.S. in a State Of Panic?...

Marco Rubio is hot again. The junior senator from Florida is in the midst of a comeback, fueled by a self-assured stand against easing relations with Cuba, some savvy campaigning in Iowa and a meeting that impressed well-heeled donors. He still faces a daunting path to the White House. Voters in his own state would rather he seek a second Senate term in 2016. He’s no longer the only bright young Republican star in the field. And he continues to come under fire for a shift on immigration, particularly from the Latino community that Republicans want to woo. Rubio seems...

The party chair calls a new report "tough love" The Democratic Party’s autopsy of its devastating defeat in 2014 calls for a renewed focus on the party’s message and winning back white Southern voters. In preliminary findings unveiled Saturday at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, a task force studied the party’s defeats in 2010 and 2014—despite its victories in the 2008 and 2012 presidential years. It called for the creation of a “National Narrative Project” to help the party develop a message that can survive in midterm election years. It called for the creation of a “National Narrative...

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has become the darling of the Tea Party and other extreme right Republicans. He is seen as their potential presidential candidate. Cruz is a superb orator and the big plus: He's Hispanic. One needs to put a pan below the chin of the right-wingers to catch the drool. They now know that in order to win the White House their candidate must take between 35 and 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. So having a candidate that not only thinks like they do and is a great orator with leadership qualities, they feel, is a winning...

The Week ^ | February 20, 2015 | Damon Linker, Sr. correspondent and consulting editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press

Dinesh D’Souza is no one’s idea of a thoughtful participant in the nation’s public conversation. Still, his tweet on Wednesday morning may have set a new low for the right-wing rabble-rouser. Commenting on a widely circulated image of President Obama taking a picture of himself with selfie stick, D’Souza tweeted the following message: “YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO... Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment.” The tweet has created quite a stir, especially among people who think it demonstrates D’Souza’s racism. But I think it reveals something that might actually be...

In his scheduled speech to the Democratic National Committee's 2016 winter meeting on Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to reclaim some ownership over an issue that is suddenly a hot topic among top Republicans -- income inequality. Recent comments from potential 2016 Republican presidential contenders about the growing gap between wealthy and working class Americans in the United States have not gone unnoticed at the White House. "Income inequality has worsened under this administration," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, said after the president's State of the Union speech. "We're facing right now a divided America when it comes to the...

A crop of 2016 Republican White House hopefuls and stars of the conservative media firmament are on the list as organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference put the finishing touches on the speakers list for this year’s gathering. The four-day event, considered one of the prime political dates on the calendar for conservative officeholders and activists, kicks off with a daylong activist “boot camp” Wednesday and concludes the evening of Feb. 28 at the Maryland’s National Harbor just outside of Washington. Republican presidential contenders now scheduled to speak include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Texas...

Fun stuff via BuzzFeed, portending an exciting “whose close relative is more of a devastating electoral liability?” primary for the GOP if the two men left standing are Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. I don’t understand this even within the parameters of the Ron Paul worldview. I thought hardcore isolationists — sorry, “non-interventionists” — believe that the war machine will always find a new pretext to keep rolling even if the current one goes bust. Obama, for instance, did eventually get Bin Laden, along with many other Al Qaeda capos … and yet at this very moment there’s an AUMF...

By this time next year we will have likely have been through the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries. We might have been through the hype of Nevada and headed to the warm welcome of South Carolina. So. Let's take a look at where we are. These are in no particular order, so please don't demand to know why your favorite wasn't mentioned first. On the Republican side, the surprise du jour has been Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's quick start largely as a result of a speech he gave in Iowa a couple of weeks ago. Walker has run...

It's still early, but the future candidate is in serious trouble. Here's why his beloved Tea Party is to blame. Just before sundown on Monday, Politico unveiled a report on how Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s support for auditing the Federal Reserve has been received thus far on Wall Street. “Very poorly” seems to be the answer. According to Politico, in fact, the likely presidential candidate’s attempts to bring “the Fed” into the light may have permanently lowered the stock of “the most interesting man in politics” — at least among the conservative members of the 1 percent. “The Fed is...

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney had a Galadriel moment. He appeared to be briefly seized by a vision of himself as an all-powerful, world-striding President Romney, before turning away from temptation and settling for the plain old Mitt Romney he has always been. It was political theater at its most bizarre, a flack-driven frenzy that doubled as a flashback to the self-delusion that blinded the Romney 2012 campaign in its final days. With Romney now out of the way, Jeb Bush has consolidated the support of the GOP's moneyed class with surprising alacrity. As Politico noted last week, the contest...

It’s far too early to guess intelligently about who will be elected president next year or whom the Republicans will nominate, but this doesn’t seem to be stopping many pundits. Fox News has its Special Report panels lay odds on the Republican field once a week. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza handicaps the Republican field once a week. And the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes has just produced an assessment of that field so exhaustive that it includes Donald Trump. Memories of eight years ago prevent me from joining in the fun. At this time in 2007, and for a considerable...

There are plenty of things to criticize Scott Walker over. His lack of a college degree is not one of them. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has emerged as a modest front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in the past couple of weeks. This may well be a temporary state of affairs. If the 2012 GOP primaries taught us anything about the presidential nominating process in the super PAC era, it’s that every candidate will be the front-runner for a few weeks. At some point this year, everyone from Huckles to Doctor-Citizen Ben Carson will serve a brief spell as the...

The Hill reports: “Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be among the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidates speaking to a prominent group of conservatives in Iowa this spring. Walker and Cruz will speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff event on April 25, the group announced in a Monday statement.” Ironically, in an election cycle in which many pundits discount the influence of Christian conservatives, they could play a critical role in selection of the nominee. In past cycles, these values voters have split their vote, never managing to unite behind a single,...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a Ron Paul problem. Or maybe it's a Ron Paul opportunity. Both sides of that particular coin were on display Friday, when Ron - Rand's father - spoke to the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. It was the elder Paul's kind of audience - young and enthusiastic about the libertarian emphasis on robust individual freedoms and miniscule government. Crowds like this had fervently supported the former congressman's quixotic bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, where he proved to be a pesky participant in the debates and a headache...

The chances of him winning the presidency are, um, slim. But what if Hillary just keeps him around a bit longer?In the financial world, inflation is defined as “too much money chasing too few goods.” In the world of political journalism, inflation is “too many pundits chasing too few scenarios.” Like the editors of Cosmopolitan struggling each month to find new sexual positions, implements, and erogenous zones, scribes are already running out of ways to chronicle the strategies and prospects of presidential contenders: “How Marco Can Stop Jeb”; “How Paul Can Block Cruz and Huckabee”; “How A Fiorina-Santorum Alliance Can...

In a move more reminiscent of Texas Senator Ted Cruz than Ohio Representative John Boehner, the House Speaker has pursued a strategy to defund President Obama’s executive action on immigration, leveraging funding for Homeland Security in the process. Bloomberg News reports: House Speaker John Boehner said he’s prepared to let funding lapse for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and blame Democrats if the Senate fails to pass a House-backed bill for the agency. … The Homeland Security Department faces a shutdown of nonessential operations if Congress does not reach agreement before current funding ends on Feb. 27. When asked...

Top GOP fundraisers will reportedly join Grover Norquist and Michael Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New Economy group on a conference call next week to push for comprehensive amnesty legislation. According to a BuzzFeed report, the GOP fundraisers on the Tuesday call will include Mitt Romney’s “former finance director Spencer Zwick; California-based fast food CEO Andrew Puzder; and billionaire health care executive Mike Fernandez.” Fernandez is reportedly leaning toward Jeb Bush, who has said that illegal immigration is an “act of love” and has not backed down for his support of a comprehensive amnesty bill, while Puzder and Zwick are unaffiliated...

I tried to warn them. In addition, back in 2012, after Marco Rubio was asked about the age of the earth, I provided conservative politicians (and others interested) a primer for answering some of the “gotcha” questions that most every conservative running for political office in the U.S. will inevitably face. It seems that Scott Walker or his staff need to spend more time on my website, or on American Thinker (one of the top conservative websites in America). Byron York hopes Walker learned a valuable lesson. Silvio Canto at American Thinker doesn’t care what Scott Walker (or Hillary Clinton)...

President Obama is putting Republicans on notice that he plans to run through their cynical politics and opposition during his final two years in office. While speaking at a DNC fundraiser in San Francisco, the president said: "And one of the things I am absolutely determined to do over the next two years is not just consolidate the gains that we’ve made, not just move forward on new initiatives like free community colleges for young people around the country who need to be trained for the 21st-century economy, but part of my goal is also to restore a sense of...

Andrew Johnson of NRO reports that in 2002, as executive of Milwaukee County, Scott Walker signed a resolution that expressed support for “comprehensive immigration reform” that will “provide greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal residency.” The author of the resolution says that Walker definitely supported it. Having signed it, he should be presumed to have supported, in any case. Will this news harm Walker’s chances of becoming the GOP presidential nominee? Standing alone, it shouldn’t. It’s one thing to sign a non-bonding resolution passed by the legislature in favor of “greater opportunity” for legal residency. It’s quite...

A neat scoop by Andrew Johnson, although I’m more interested in grassroots reaction to it than I am in the story itself. “Governor Walker does not support amnesty,” the governor’s spokesman, Tom Evenson, tells National Review Online. Evenson says the 2002 resolution was “stripped of references to amnesty before passage” and, in fact, reinforces the governor’s view that illegal immigrants should face penalties before they are granted citizenship. The resolution, viewable here, did not mention or spell out such penalties, and expressed support for “comprehensive immigration reform” that would have provided “greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal...

The Politico ^ | February 13, 2015 | James Hohmann and Kristen Heyford

The Walker surge in Iowa, Hillary’s Obama problem and other news from Week One of our yearlong insiders’ survey from the ground in 2016’s first-in-the-nation races.Most Iowa insiders believe Scott Walker would win their state’s Republican caucuses if they were held this week. But they’re not this week, and virtually none of the most influential thought leaders in the Hawkeye State believe that the Wisconsin governor will sustain his recent bounce in polls. This is one of several intriguing findings in the debut survey of The POLITICO Caucus. More than 100 of the most plugged-in activists, operatives and elected officials...

The early dinner crowd near the Capitol on Thursday yielded at least one notable pairing, with overtones of the presidential election cycle to come: Sen. Ted Cruz and former Ambassador John Bolton. Sharing a meal at Johnny’s Half Shell before Bolton was set to appear on Fox News, Cruz launched into a discussion of 2016 strategy audible to anyone within earshot, including a reporter for the Washington Examiner. Bolton has himself flirted with the idea of running for president in 2016, but his conversation with Cruz suggested the Texas senator, at least, views Bolton as a source of valuable input,...

Since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected hearing Alabama’s appeal on gay marriage earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has taken the firmest stance of all potential Republican presidential candidate on the issue. Cruz introduced the State Marriage Defense Act just two days after the high court’s decision, which would allow states to decide on how to define marriage, rather than federal judges. While Republicans have long been the party supporting only traditional marriage, media reports have recently stressed how slow likely Republican 2016 presidential have been to speak out on the Alabama matter. The Supreme Court opted not to...

The Club for Growth was among the Beltway groups that battled against the “establishment” and egged on the government shutdown. To its credit however, its business membership stayed out of the immigration fight rather than join the ant-market right-wingers who want to restrict the U.S. labor market. And unlike outfits like the Senate Conservatives Fund (who tended to pick outlandish, losing candidates), the Club for Growth backed Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and now-freshman Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). Under a new president, David McIntosh, the Club for Growth now has a choice whether to be an outlier group or...